What percentage of your income goes into transportation? For most Americans, it’s a hard figure to estimate.
But transportation is the second-largest driver of most household budgets, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Josh Geyer of HUD says most people underestimate how much they spend just getting around, because transportation costs are fragmented: car payments, insurance, registration, maintenance, fuel and repair.
And that’s before you’ve even left the driveway. How much you spend will depend on what you drive, the cost of gas and, of course, how much you travel.
But your miles — and therefore your transportation costs — vary depending on where you live.
For example, a single worker in Chittenden County spends about $7,259 on transportation in a year, while someone with the same profile in Essex County might spend closer to $10,000. There’s simply more ground to cover between destinations in the Northeast Kingdom.
And because typical incomes vary from place to place, the same amount of money can take a different sized chunk out of different household budgets.
Consider Grand Isle: At about $14,045 in transportation costs per year for a typical household, it’s the most expensive Vermont county that HUD’s Location Affordability Index measures. But the income there tends to be high, so that expenditure is considered relatively affordable — 24 percent of the household’s income.
The data that informs these calculations is old news to researchers and policy makers. But for the first time, it’s been synthesized and made available to the public to help people make more informed decisions about where they live and work.
An online Transportation Cost Calculator allows users to anonymously customize data points starting with where you live and spanning from household income to the miles per gallon your car gets. Plug in your travel route and the calculator will give you a sense of how affordable that commute might be.
The data are not perfect, as the calculator is built largely on nationwide estimates. Income and property taxes, for example, are built into the baseline data, but not with 100 percent accuracy.
“If there’s a wide swing (between local taxes), that is something that you’ll have to keep in mind,” Geyer said.
Nevertheless, for people considering a move or looking to trim their budgets, the tool can be thought-provoking. For example, plug in your numbers to get a picture of your combined housing and transportation budget, then change the address. Would you save money by moving, or encounter hidden costs along the way?
HUD director Shaun Donovan has said that too often people try to save money with a move but unwittingly trade housing costs for transportation expenses.
The calculator also allows users to switch between renter and homeowner profiles — another major source of variation in an area’s cost of living.
Vermont Housing Finance Authority intends to spread the word about the cost calculator to its clients.
Leslie Black-Plumeau, the research and communications coordinator for VHFA, said the cost calculator can help people plan better to afford all their expenses. “We’re very interested in helping to share info about all housing costs,” Black-Plumeau said, including the cost of transportation for different housing areas.
Geyer said he hopes more data will be layered into the tool in the future.
“You have to look at more than just housing, but you also have to look at more than just housing and transportation,” Geyer said. He pointed to the cost of health care, food, education, child care and public safety as other cost-of-living drivers.
“We agree with all of that,” Geyer said. “This is a first step in what we hope is a movement toward thinking about these issues in a much more comprehensive way.”
Geyer said HUD hopes policy makers and community planners also will avail themselves of the Location Affordability Index, a second tool that aggregates data for eight different household types to show the “affordability landscape” across neighborhoods, cities and regions.
He’d also like to see the index account for closer to 100 percent of the American population. When the index is broken down to a geographic scale, the available 942 “core based statistical areas” (similar to metropolitan areas) only include about 94 percent of the population. This makes the index far from perfect for Vermont.
Vermont Agency of Transportation policy and planning director Joe Segale said there may be an application of the index for long-range planning and evaluating scenarios.
“Over the next 20 years,” Segale speculated, “if our land use goes one direction or another, what might be the total cost of that for the people of Vermont?”
The Location Affordability cost calculator and index are available online at www.locationaffordability.info, where extensive methodological notes are available.
